Research Design for Social Impact Resource Hub
Resource Hub
This resource hub supports community-based organisations in the UK who are working within and alongside movements for justice. It is for people who challenge extractive ways of knowing, and want research that supports liberation, accountability and collective power.
The core resource here — Research Design for Social Impact — comes from the continuous professional development workstream, as part of the Social Transformation and Advocacy through Research (STAR) project at the University of East London and the University of Bristol. STAR is funded by OfS and Research England and exists to disrupt barriers in research participation and careers for global majority communities and historically underserved groups. It does this by building targeted research skills and advocacy capacities that expand who gets to produce knowledge and why that knowledge matters.
Traditional research training and evaluation models often centre institutional priorities, extract community labour, and replicate inequality. This course rejects those defaults. It is designed with and for grassroots practitioners, activists and small organisations who want to transform how evidence and research shape social change
Who this is for
You’ll benefit from these resources if you are:
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Based in the UK, working in a community-based, social justice organisation.
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Engaged in monitoring, evaluation, research or learning work that seeks to centre equity.
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Ready to challenge conventional approaches to “evidence” that reinforce power imbalances.
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Working with or part of populations historically excluded from research leadership — including global majority communities, people with lived experience, and other marginalised groups.Â
What this page offers
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Downloadable guides and templates: Tools to help you design anti-oppressive research questions, participatory methods, and data processes that serve your community.
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Practical frameworks: Clear frameworks that shift research away from compliance metrics and towards accountability, community benefit and shared analysis.
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How-to videos: Four step-by-step videos with examples from real community research and evaluation practice.
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Course foundations: Materials drawn from the Research Design for Social Impact programme — an 7-week learning experience that blends equity-centred design thinking, participatory practice, and anti-racist approaches to research planning, data collection, analysis and storytelling.Â
What you’ll gain
These resources will help you:
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Understand how power, history and context shape research and evidence practices.
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Design research and learning that is accountable to the people and issues you care about.
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Apply participatory methods that redistribute ownership of data and findings.
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Build tools and language to push back against extractive or superficial evaluation demands.
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Connect with others committed to equity-centred research.
This resource hub is grounded in anti-oppressive practice, community accountability and the belief that research should serve collective liberation, not extraction.
Use what is useful. Adapt what is needed. Credit the source. Care for people first.
Our 8 Principles: The Foundation of Research Design for Social Impact
These guides are rooted in Design for Social Impact's 8 interconnected principles that challenge traditional power dynamics and centre the communities most affected by systemic oppression:
Intersectionality shapes everything we do—we recognise that people hold multiple, overlapping identities and experience systems of power (racism, classism, ableism, patriarchy, homophobia, xenophobia) in unique and compounded ways. Our work is explicitly anti-oppressive, naming and challenging the structural forces that create harm rather than pathologising individuals or communities. We believe in co-design—research must be shaped with communities from the start, not done to them—and we apply systems thinking to understand how policies, institutions, and histories interact to create or sustain injustice. This commitment to understanding root causes drives our focus on structural change and action: research findings must support campaigns, policy shifts, and movement-building, not just sit in reports. We practice mutual learning, where researchers and communities teach and learn from one another as equals, rejecting hierarchies of knowledge that privilege academic expertise over lived experience.
Our principles also encompass environmental and economic justice, recognising that the climate crisis and exploitative economic systems disproportionately harm marginalised communities—research must address these interconnected struggles. We root our practice in pedagogies of care and learning, creating research spaces that are trauma-informed, accessible, and healing rather than extractive or re-traumatising. Underpinning all of this are two fundamental commitments: we actively cede power, redistributing resources, decision-making, and ownership to the communities we work alongside, and we acknowledge historical context, grounding our work in the legacies of colonialism, slavery, and ongoing state violence that shape present-day inequalities.
These principles aren't abstract ideals—they're practical commitments that guide how we design research questions, choose methods, analyse data, share findings, and measure success. They remind us that research is never neutral: it either reproduces harm or contributes to liberation.
How to Use This Resource Pack
Each guide is a standalone 2-3 page resource that you can:
- Read on its own (no need to go in order)
- Share with staff, volunteers, or community members
- Use as training materials for peer researchers
- Adapt to your organisation's specific context
- Reference when designing proposals, research projects, or evaluations
Each guide includes:
- Clear explanations of concepts and principles
- Step-by-step practical instructions
- Real-world examples from UK CBOs
- Templates, checklists, and scripts
- Ethical considerations and red flags
- Further resources for deeper learning
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Access the Research GuidesÂ
Click on the icons below to download each of the research guides.
Click below to access each resource guide
Resource 1:
Introduction and Resource Guide
Rethinking Evidence: Why Research Design Matters
Resource 2:
Designing Trauma-Informed Research
Build safety, choice and care into every stage of research.
Resource 3
Intersectionality
Co-produce research with communities, not just about them.
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Resource 4:
Creative and Grassroots Methods Toolkit
Practical guidance on methods such as photovoice, community mapping, story circles and arts-based approaches
Resource 5:
Co-Analysis & Collective Sense-Making
Share power in interpreting data and meaning.
Resource 6:
Co-Design
Steward community knowledge with accountability.
Resource 7:
Donor Reporting
Meet accountability demands without erasing community voice.
Resource 8:
Sustainability, Knowledge Justice & Futures
Protect community knowledge beyond project cycles.
How to Adapt These Guides to Your Context
These guides are meant to be adapted, not prescribed. Every community and organisation is different.
Questions to Guide Adaptation:
- What does trauma-informed practice look like in our specific community?
- Which methods will resonate culturally with the people we work with?
- What barriers (language, trust, capacity) do we need to address?
- How can we make this work with our limited resources?
- What funder or institutional constraints are we navigating?
Remember: These guides offer principles and tools. You are the expert on what will work in your context.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
These resources are offered in the spirit of collective learning, care and accountability — not compliance.
Who are these resources for?
Can we adapt or reuse these materials?
Do we need prior research experience to use this pack?
Does this replace formal ethical approval or safeguarding processes?
Does this cover every research situation?
What if a resource brings up difficult or sensitive issues?
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Acknowledgements & Grounding
This resource pack draws on decades of work by:
- Black feminist scholars (Kimberlé Crenshaw, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks)
- Indigenous scholars and knowledge keepers (Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Shawn Wilson)
- Participatory action researchers (Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals-Borda, Budd Hall)
- Disability justice activists (Mia Mingus, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha)
- Community organisers and grassroots movements (too many to name, but we honour you)
This work would not exist without the communities who have resisted extraction, demanded dignity, and built knowledge systems rooted in care and liberation.
Want to find out about upcoming Research Design for Social Impact courses
We send quarterly newsletters full of useful and free resources
Access the Videos
We've created four short videos explaining different approaches to integrating equity-centred practices into your research and learning practice.
Each video has closed captions and PDFs are available. If you come across any issues regarding accessibility, please drop us an email at [email protected]
Video 1: Introduction to Critical Participatory Action Research
Research as a tool for change, not just understanding.
This video offers a clear introduction to Critical Participatory Action Research. It traces CPAR’s roots in liberation struggles and popular education, and explains what makes it different from traditional participation. You’ll leave with a grounded sense of when CPAR is appropriate, what it asks of researchers, and what it makes possible for communities.
Video 2: Intersectionality, Power and Research
How power shows up in research design, data, and decisions.
This video introduces intersectionality as a research lens, not a buzzword. It looks at how race, gender, class, disability, migration status, and age shape who is heard, what counts as evidence, and whose lives are misrepresented. You’ll learn how to design research questions and methods that do not flatten people’s realities.
Video 3 : Creative Methods
Using images to tell stories research often silences.
This video introduces Photovoice as a community-led, political method rooted in organising and resistance. It covers ethics, power, consent, and safety, alongside practical steps for using photography to surface lived experience, challenge dominant narratives, and support collective action — not extractive storytelling.
Video 4: Co-Analysis
Where meaning is made — and power is usually taken back.
This video focuses on co-analysis as a justice practice. It explores how to involve participants in interpreting findings, sense-making, and narrative building. You’ll learn simple ways to ask “Did we get this right?” and to treat analysis as a shared, relational process rather than a technical task.
Design for Social Impact has worked  with dozens of organisations, including:
